Strange Candy
by Overlithe77
Summary: Three creepy ficlets for Halloween. First story: Ummi was not unprepared for her encounter with Koh. Second story: sometimes Yue is sure she's not alone inside her skin. Third story: at the end of his life, Aang isn't the only one to be reborn.
1. Bone, Blood, Water

**Title: Strange Candy: Bone, Blood, Water**

**Author: overlithe**

**Fandom: **_Avatar: the Last Airbender_

**Summary:** Three creepy ficlets for Halloween. First story: Ummi was not unprepared for her encounter with Koh. Triple drabble.

**Characters/Pairings:** Ummi and Koh; references to Kuruk/Ummi

**Prompt:** **fanfic100** prompt 081. How?

**Word Count:** 300

**Rating:** K+

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I only own the DVD sets and a copy of the art book, and I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement.

**Author's Note:** Many thanks to **greedyslayer** for going over this drabble for me.

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**Bone, Blood, Water**

Water swirled around her, alien, struggled and claws tightened with a clack of bone on bone_. I am Ummi of the Southern Water Tribe. I have learned the art of our ancest_—Dark coils tightened around her, deeper, deeper, choking off thought. They spun through strange light, fog that stung her skin, stank of blood.

Her captor released her. Ummi sprang back, flesh and bones and lungs throbbing from where she'd tried to bend, and kick, and scream. She shook sticky vines off her face and was sure she saw eyes in the leaves, winking.

A face the colour of new ice turned towards her and in one shivery second she knew exactly where she was, who she was facing. Insect legs skittered on the ground and the Face-Stealer curled around her, big enough to block out even the ghostly light of this place, moving like a leopard-orca. It smelled of dust and stale air.

_Do not move a muscle_. Her heartbeats felt suddenly very loud in her chest. The Face-Stealer winked and a new face appeared, grey hair wafting in a ghost wind, dead eyes sunk in wrinkled flesh. _Don't say anything. Don't say anything_. 'What a pleasure to see you again,' the Face-Stealer said in a voice like a razor wrapped in rotting silk. She felt knotted thread unravel, carved bone crumble to dust—the protections Kuruk and Grandmother had given her, melting like smoke under a snow-ridden gale. _Not a muscle_. Even so, she felt her body tense.

'You, your bridegroom and I have… unfinished business,' the spirit said, and in a flash a new face appeared: a red grin, droopy eyes, comically huge cheeks.

She wouldn't shake. She wouldn't cry.

But before she could bite her tongue—

—she chuckled.

++The End++


	2. Debt

**Title: Strange Candy: Debt**

**Author: overlithe**

**Fandom:** _Avatar: the Last Airbender_

**Summary: **Three creepy ficlets for Halloween. Second story: sometimes Yue is sure she's not alone inside her skin. Triple drabble and a half.

**Characters/Pairings:** Yue, Hanh; gen

**Prompt:** **fanfic100** prompt 004. Insides

**Word Count:** 350

**Rating:** K+

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I only own the DVD sets and a copy of the art book, and I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement.

**Author's Note:** Happy Halloween, everyone!

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**Debt**

In the winter Yue turned seven, an eclipse winked out the moon into an empty black eye. Yue took to her bed and when Yugoda came to examine her, she feigned a cough. As her mother spooned hot buffalo-yak butter soup into her mouth, she told Yue that their people had learned bending from the Moon. When the Moon hid—

'I'm not a waterbender,' Yue said, and pretended to cough again.

How could she explain the hum she'd felt in her flesh, like hundreds of tiny fingers scratching at her skin from the inside?

Once, during her tenth summer, she woke up just before dawn and opened her eyes to damp grass and bamboo trees. She scrambled to her feet. Just ahead of her, the water in the Spirit Pool sloshed softly, like the beat of a tiny heart, and her muscles felt sore, as though she'd been running all night long.

'Do you ever feel like you're not alone?' She was fourteen, and asked Hahn. She couldn't ask her father, she couldn't ask Yugoda, and she certainly couldn't ask Master Pakku. Hahn's gaze drifted to the diadem nestling on her hair. 'I mean, when no one else is around?' she said.

He shrugged. 'You mean, like you're being watched?' A corner of his mouth curled up. 'Don't worry—'

She didn't hear the rest, and after that she didn't ask again.

It wasn't like being watched.

Sometimes she remembered things that had never happened to her and places she'd never been to, like the debris of some other girl's life.

Sometimes she caught a glimpse of herself in the canal water, or on a polished ice wall, and for a second she'd be sure she saw a stranger looking back, someone with eyes bright and hard as stars, and a ghost's bone-white hair.

Sometimes she dreamed of nothing but night skies, empty, and beautiful, and wonderfully, terribly cold.

And sometimes, in a fold of sleep before dawn, her blood would talk in a tongue before words, and whisper, _Remember who you belong to. Remember whose life you have_.

++The End++


	3. The Dark Half

**Title: Strange Candy: The Dark Half**

**Author: overlithe**

**Fandom: **_Avatar: the Last Airbender_

**Summary:** Three creepy ficlets for Halloween. Third story: At the end of his life, Aang isn't the only one to be reborn. Quadruple drabble.

**Characters/Pairings:** Aang, mentions of his past lives and the Avatar Spirit; references to Aang/Katara

**Prompt: fanfic100** prompt 029. Birth

**Word Count:** 400

**Rating:** K+

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I only own the DVD sets and a copy of the art book, and I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement. (Also, despite the title, this has nothing to do with the Stephen King novel of the same name.)

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the delay in posting this one, hope you enjoy it.

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**The Dark Half**

Aang did not fear death. His life had been full, if not long. He had no regrets he couldn't die with. It had been years since he had finally understood one of the monks' most challenging lessons, how balance required acceptance of what you couldn't change.

He closed his eyes. All around him there were soft whispers, faces he'd loved, some living, some dead. Someone—Katara?—touched the skin on his forehead, but he didn't feel it. He was twelve years old again, riding on the back on a penguin, and snow spattered on his and Katara's faces as they laughed. The air smelled spicy and stung his skin.

There was no pain. Instead the world parted like a sheet of rice paper being torn in half. He floated out of a place that had once been an Air Temple, through pools of shadow, falls of light. He was Aang. He was Roku. He was Kyoshi. He was Kuruk. He was Yangchen. He was a child stirring in her mother's belly, moments before birth. He was a thousand different faces in a thousand different lifetimes.

Then he saw it.

At first he noticed only the cycle of his reincarnations, his past bodies lined in an unbroken chain into time immemorial. But close to each incarnation there was a shadow, a reflection seen on a mirror dim with fog, dark with age.

The world had to be in perfect balance. There was an Avatar—

—and there was something else.

He was in the Eastern Air Temple. In a summer house in the Northern Fire Nation. In a village in the Earth Kingdom. In a city of ice. His body was sticky with blood and afterbirth. And at the window, at the threshold, unseen, unnoticed, something scratched on the glass and said,_ Let me in. Let me in_.

For a moment, leaves rustled on the back of a Lion-Turtle.

Every action had its opposite and equal reaction.

He was back at what had been the Southern Air Temple, floating in a room silent with grief. The air was a cold blue. The thing at the window crawled in, scuttled across the floor like an insect. He stared at his shadow twin. The spirit wore his face, but the eyes were completely black, and when it spoke, the words sounded like sharp teeth, hard claws.

'We both get to be born now.'

++The End++

**Notes:** Poor Aang. I like him so much. And then I do these things to him. Oh, well—it wouldn't be a horror fic otherwise!


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